IfG.CC - The Institute for eGovernment

New research commissioned by IT firm APR Smartlogik has said local authorities could save over £500 million per year by giving call centre agents access to intranet-based information and bringing call handling efficiency into line with the private sector average standards. The APR Smartlogik research highlighted that:

• In excess of 440 million calls are made to UK local authorities every year
• Local authority call centre or switchboard average call length is 4.51 minutes, compared with a commercial call centre average of just 3.3 minutes
• Even on the most conservative of models, UK councils could save over £500 million each year just by reducing call times to the commercial sector standard.
• This equates to savings of over £1.1 million per year for the average UK local authority.

The APR research calculated the cost savings accruable through reducing the average length of a call, but did not take into account the potential savings to be made through reducing the actual cost per call minute. It is estimated that a further £450 million would be saved per year if local authorities reduced the cost per call minute to commercial call centre averages.

But the research doesn't of course indicate the scale of the e-Government job to be done to get information on line, in advance of the call centre upgrades. That sounds like 2005-2006 before any significant savings would be likely, as so many local authorities don't have FOI Act planning firmly in place, nor do they have joined up systems

Richard Pinder, Sales and Marketing Director, APR Smartlogik, commented: “Implementing e-Government may initially seem a somewhat thankless task, beset by hidden costs, and local authorities often find it difficult to raise the issue within the council’s strategic agenda. However, it is important not to view compliance and business challenges in isolation.

“In fact, the most significant cost savings are likely to result from providing call centre agents and council employees with intranet access to well categorised information that they can retrieve rapidly and accurately, in order to reduce the time it takes to satisfy each caller’s enquiry. The potential savings that this brings is sure to bring CEOs to the edge of their seats”.

The Government’s vision of web-enablement has a certain focus on migrating enquiry-handling online. As a result, local authorities should (but many don't) categorise all shared online content according to standards set by Government, and should plan to implement systems and software which performs this categorisation automatically. If this were in place the call centre savings would look in sight.

Quelle: PublicTechnology, 20.05.2004